# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1953_S122
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

122 SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES

years), it can have profound implications for the religious
ground, professional insights, and spiritual quality of the
uates. Certainly it brings into question the validity of a p
which maintains a six-year preparatory plan. According to p
ent estimates only 39.2 per cent of the students who go to!
St. Louis Seminary from the preparatory schools this year’
have had the full six years of training in the preparatory sys

It is not possible to fix a specific cause for this developn
There is little doubt, however, that the increased costs of
education, coupled with the natural desire of many parents to
boys in the home until they have become more mature, are a fa
The increasing availability of Lutheran high schools in the Mid;
source of a large number of Synod’s students, and the simulta
adjustment of curricular requirements and promotion polic
the preparatory schools also create the possibility of later en
ment without the attachment of academic penalties as severe!
those formerly applied. Finally, the growth of Synod, invol
as it does and should, increasing numbers of converts from bro
sectors of American life, brings to the Church a heavier emp!
on the tradition that education for the professions begins atti
college level.

No doubt the establishment of the Senior College will alle
the negative aspects of this trend, since it will give the Ch
opportunity to control the academic curriculum and to train
isterial candidates in the professional and spiritual traditio:
the Church for four full college years. In the interim the
is making appropriate recommendations (in another section o
report) to cover the excessive immediate demands which this ty
makes on the staff and physical plant of the St. Louis Se
and to preserve the experimental nature of the programs \
Synod has authorized at Fort Wayne and at Portland.

B. Programs in Progress

Current Status of Senior College Project

Your Board is pleased to report that it has been able to;
out its instructions regarding the Senior College according
schedule specified in Resolution 26, page 255 of the Procet
of the Forty-first Regular Convention of Synod (1950).

Accordingly, with the concurrence of the Board of Dire
the Board for Higher Education has selected a site (maps on p
124) for the Senior College and has made the necessary 2
ments for its acquisition. On November 18, 1952, this Board
under ‘option until August 1, 1953, a 126-acre site in the C
land-Mount Prospect area northwest of the city of Chicago/
site is located about 20 miles from the Chicago Loop; on two’